The Shifting Field of Play
Two thoughts on how we can approach the future
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A few months ago, I chaperoned an overnight camping trip to Cape Cod with my daughter’s sixth grade class. One experience from that trip has been on my mind lately.
Whenever we had some down time, there was a large grassy field at the campground where the kids would congregate to play. Somebody had brought a football with them on the trip, and on our first day, I saw an impromptu football game start.
One of the students called the others together with great vigor: “Come on guys, we’re going to play football!” this student excitedly yelled, then followed up with “Does anybody know how to play football?”
Football was a new game for this group, but one that several of them eagerly jumped into. With no prior knowledge, they proceeded to organically develop their own rules and method of play. There were no yard markers, no end zones, no out of bounds. There were hardly even really teams. With each play, the rules and even the playing field itself seemed to shape shift.
Kids seem to be especially fluid in their play. Games are played for fun, and if something isn’t working, the game changes. The field of play can grow or shrink, who’s on which team shifts, and scores are rarely kept.
Contrast that to the way many older kids and adults view games and play; let’s stick with the football example for a moment. There are clearly defined boundaries and markers for progress- small ones every yard and large ones every five yards. There’s even often officials to monitor the game and ensure rules are being followed.
But as my daughter's classmates taught me, the rules of the game need not be so fixed, the boundaries so clearly defined.
I think this example extends far beyond the world of play and has implications for the real world.
There is perhaps no public figure more adept at redefining the field of play than the former and future president Donald Trump. This is neither a compliment nor a disparagement, but simply a recognition of clear fact.
Like many Americans, I spent the first Trump term aghast at how he refused to conform to the norms and customs of our society. His freewheeling style of speech seemed ignorant and ill informed, and maybe it often was. But regardless of his intentions or what was in his mind or heart, Trump succeeded at shifting our country to a place where people have less rights, less freedom, and where corporate oligarchs benefit from the spoils of everyone’s labor.
As we head into the next Trump term in a few weeks, I think it’s important to recognize that we will not survive it if we continue to believe that the old rules of the game, the old scoring system, and even the referees matter.
My plan for the future is two-pronged, and whether Trump continues to hold power indefinitely or we end up with a President AOC in 2028, this plan remains the same.
First, I think it’s important for all of us to recognize that the playing field and the rules of the game are fungible. Our expectations of what is possible in this world need not be shaped by what has come before or what fits into the current mold- we need to imagine beyond that and openly discuss where we should be headed.
I’ve been reading the incredible book What It Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World by Prentis Hemphill. Prentis is a Black, queer therapist who examines how social movements can only succeed when we also work on our internal selves.
The book opens with an exploration of the importance of vision. According to Hemphill, a big part of social change comes from imagining what is possible:
“I don’t think healing begins where we think it does, in our doing something. I believe it begins in another realm altogether, the realm of dreams and imagination. A realm that I might also call spirit. A place of potential, where possibilities reside, where we retrieve, through prayer or in dreams, visions for ourselves and for the world that make us more whole. And with our visions in place, we can realize them through what follows, our commitment and the steps we take toward them.”
Perhaps the best recent example of imagining something beyond the existing paradigm is the “Fight for $15” campaign, which began in New York City in 2012. At the time, the federal minimum wage was $7.25 an hour. The very notion of a more than double increase to the minimum wage was audacious, provocative, seemingly impossible. Yet people imagined it, talked about it, demanded it.
The “Fight for $15” spread quickly and far beyond just fast food restaurants. What once seemed visionary, soon became attainable. While the federal minimum wage is still $7.25 to this day, many states have increased their minimum wages and companies felt pressure to compete for employees with higher wages. I was at Target recently and saw that their advertised starting salary was $16.25. The Target was in Rhode Island, where state minimum wage is $14 and is set to increase to $15 in 2025. In 2012, when Fight for $15 began, Rhode Island minimum wage was $7.40.
I think we may be at a similar inflection point after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Until now, we have accepted that a murderer is the person who pulls the trigger on a gun or who stabs the knife.
But as
points out in a recent piece for , the public reaction to Thompson’s death has largely been vindication, even celebration. It has ignited a discussion about the way the U.S. insurance industry operates, with many people either sharing their own insurance horror story or being one or two degrees of separation away from somebody being refused critical care at their greatest time of need, resulting in huge medical debt or even preventable death.As a society, we are redefining murder in real time, and the CEOs who profit tens of millions of dollars annually by limiting insurance payouts are being shown to have blood on their hands.
It doesn’t take much imagination to allow that definition to grow wider and wider: the military leaders who order bombings of civilians, the police officers who reflexively reach for a gun in the name of “protecting citizens,” the fossil fuel company executives who profit from polluting our air, the processed food company leaders who allow toxic chemicals banned in other countries into the U.S. food supply.
These acts of murder are often systemic, slow-acting, and harder to trace to one individual, but they still result in death just as much as shooting somebody in the back of the head with a bullet does. When we allow ourselves to see that the boundaries of the game aren’t as fixed as we think, we can see through the propaganda and create new definitions.
My second approach to dealing with the next several years is to literally embody the future that I want to see. If my first approach is about defining the game on our terms, the second is to play another game entirely. Let Trump and his ilk continue to play football- it won’t bother me as much if my focus is on basketball.
In the most practical sense, I want to divest as much as I can from large businesses that enrich the extremely wealthy whilst harming their workers and the planet.
However, I recognize that this is not entirely possible in our modern, interconnected world. I love how
described self-sufficiency on my podcast earlier this year when discussing farmers: “no matter how good a farmer I am, I can't grow a Verizon plan.”I have already given up my Amazon Prime membership. I am largely disconnected from the large grocery stores and industrial food system, opting to purchase fruit, vegetables, meat, and dairy from local farmers or our local co-op grocer. I choose local retailers and used goods whenever I can. Heck, I went more than an entire year without buying new clothes!
I recognize that some of my choices are a result of privilege. I am willing to spend slightly more money for something from a local business.
But I’ve also fought back against the perception that shopping locally is more expensive, noting how several independent grocery stores I visited were priced lower on items than Whole Foods, even though Amazon’s acquisition of the store came with the promise of lower prices. I’ve described in this newsletter how money leaves a community through big box store purchases and I don’t want to be a part of that system.
While I may be dependent on Apple for the laptop I’m typing on at the moment, Honda for my minivan (which is nearly 10 years old), and other big companies for certain necessary goods, I can also recognize the damage that these large companies do and chose to mitigate it with my lifestyle.
Some of my choices may seem like impossible changes to make, but my feeling is that life is too short to spend time living in other people’s version of reality. It’s time that we each recognize that our version of today and tomorrow is just as valid as Donald Trump’s, Joe Biden’s, Vladimir Putin’s, or Benjamin Netanyahu’s.
We must have vision for how we want to move forward, speak that vision until it becomes truth, and live in the version of the world that we want to inhabit. I’ll be doing that for the next four years and beyond. I hope you’ll join me.
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